Coffee and Tea Staining and Aging Fabric for Fabric Journals o Primitiver Dolls

I recently have seen a new stain formula combining coffee and tea to make your fabric journals or your handmade dolls look shabby, stained, grungy, antiqued, vintage and quite aged.

Mix tea already brewed, instant coffee, cinnamon, vanilla (a tad) and let fabric sit for a bit. I have found that cotton, or muslin absorbs the color where a polyester or acrylic type fabric does not. (You can buy various degrees of cream or tan colored cotton or muslin). It resists the color. Do not rinse your fabric because the new color will wash out. Let it sit in the fibers of the fabric, and lightly squeeze the fabric, lie it down on an old towel to dry. You can also use a hair dryer or your dryer to remove the excess moisture or hang it up on a line with something underneath if it drips. I would stain my fabric first before cutting out the doll patterns.

Various teas like raspberry or blueberry tea have a different pigment and can make the fabric a bit pink tinged or purplish tinged.

After you make your doll or book, put some coffee grounds into your matte medium to paint over it in places leaving a texture, a coffee scent and a matte covering for the fabric.

So now get off to those primitive dolls and aged old fabric journals.

Layers of collage

In this collage, after applying the acrylic paint with a credit card on a prepared canvas board, I used a tan brown color, an olive green color and an aqua blue scraped over the canvas approximately 3-4 times, drying the layers in between with a blow dryer.

I used a baby wipe, paper towel and a scraping tool to make marks and wipe off paint in places to have layers of color peek through. What I realized was that the value of the paints were almost the same, so the layers were getting a bit muddled and merky. Then I applied the white with stencils and build up from there.

I noticed how much I love bird images so I added that along with some papers with shades of a burgundy red. Using stamp pads with french writing, I added white, black, and red inks.

I wrote with black and white marker, applied transparent black letters, dripped olive green ink, and I love the use of charcoal around edges and across the whole piece creating a shabby piece.

Believe it or not, I did journal on how to do a collage and why I like to collage all over this piece. It is quite subliminal where some of the writing shows and some doesn't.

Enjoy! Now I know what it looks like to apply colors I like and colors I don't!

ARCHITECTURE

I love architecture; especially buildings that were built so long ago. I just can't figure out how on earth monks so far long ago, built this beautiful missionary church that you see on my blog. When I went to Arizona for my husband's father's funeral (I have never been to Arizona before), my mouth gaped in awe over the colors, design, shapes and various textures I saw. As I even look at my photos, I see collages already made just by taking pictures of what has been built years and years and years ago. When I visited this church, I felt like I was in a western movie. Do you want to hear "shabby"? Oh yes, shabby chic all the way. the muted colors were lovely along with gold gilding. I will add more photos of the inside of this fabulous building.

So we artists of today are not far off from the founding forefathers of this country.